The Night I Died and Other Short Stories

By Dwai Lahiri

'The Night I Died and Other Short Stories' is a collection of short stories written over a span of twenty-odd years. The first three stories in the book comprise a short-story trilogy called 'The Pagla Baba Trilogy'. Pagla is an Indian colloquial term meaning "crazy" and Baba is a term used varyingly to call one's father, or elderly men, especially the renunciants of the Indic spiritual traditions. These three started this author off on his fiction writing adventures. The first two stories are about the protagonist who has a life-transforming encounter with someone he had written off as a destitute on the streets. The stories delve into various aspects of the individual's psyche and his quest for self-improvement and regaining balance in his life. The third story is about a mentally challenged young boy growing up in a remote village in India.

The fourth story is a supernatural tale that the author's grandfather told him when he was a child. 

The fifth and final story is that of a newlywed honeymoon couple who visit Kenya for their African Safari adventure and have the most bizarre supernatural experience.

The genre of the stories in this book bridges the occult, the supernatural and the spiritual. They are this author's attempts to bring to the readers his internal world -- a little crazy, a little whimsical and almost always entertaining. These are the kind of stories you would want to read on gray rainy afternoons and cold dark nights, or when you are feeling disturbed and harangued by intrusions of the world outside.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dwai Lahiri
• Release date: Mar 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393546924

Dwai Lahiri

Dwai is a long time practitioner of the Daoist internal arts with a focus on Taijiquan. He is also an eager student and practitioner of Advaita Vedānta, Kashmir Shaivism and Yoga. He enjoys being part of the artistic process in various forms - as a writer, musician and a martial artist. The Arts are an excellent medium for spiritual practice and he has dedicated more than two decades of his life in the quest for spiritual clarity. He started writing in the early 2000s in the public domain, under the pen name ‘Rudra’ for ‘sulekha.com’, which then was the preeminent online literary portal for the Indian Diaspora. In 2007 he started the online journal ‘The Medha Journal’ where over 1000 articles---the compiled work of 96 authors including himself are available for readers today, on various topics ranging from Indic studies, philosophy to poetry and fiction. In the worldly domain, he is a software engineer for a Silicon Valley software company, and an engineer by training. He likes to think of himself as humble bridge between many disparate worlds-- science and spirituality, art and technology, Eastern and Western cultures. He lives in the suburbs of Chicago in Illinois, USA with his wife, daughter and two dogs.

Book preview

Author’s Foreword

THIS IS A COMPILATION of short stories that I have written over the years, with a new one I wrote exclusively for this publication, titled Ngai. The other stories were those I wrote under the pen name ‘Rudra’, first on sulekha.com and subsequently on The Medha Journal.

While they do exist online individually, I thought it would be a good idea to compile them in a small book format.

I hope you enjoy reading the book. Please don’t forget to leave a review on the site where you downloaded this ebook from. Reviews from our readers are practically the lifeblood of us authors. While I know that you are extremely busy and have taken the time out of your busy life to read this book, please do me the favor of writing a review.

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The Night I died

THE NIGHT I DIED OF a Heart Attack...

Well not exactly... I dreamt that I died of a heart attack. Perhaps it'd been sitting in the back of my head for some time now.

My girlfriend says that I eat too much oily and fattening food, and smoke way too much!

I've also developed a promising belly (that's out of sync with the rest of my body though). I make up my mind to exercise (every week without fail) and I do it for a few days, until I get bored with the routine and schedule.

The sheer dreariness of exercising at a fixed time makes me want to puke!

Anyhow, that's not what I am writing this stuff up for; I actually don't know why I am writing this.

Sometimes, I feel as though the blood isn't flowing very well through my heart. I get the feeling that an artery is blocked... or perhaps two. Can't say for sure.

I tell my friends about this every so often, and they tell me, Why don't you just go and get an ECG done? That'll make everything clear.

I smile and say, That's a good idea.

But little do they know, I am afraid of death (I mean, who isn't?). But, what I am even more afraid of is finding out that I am going to die.

There! I've gone and said it finally. I am going to die! Nothing unusual about it. We're all going to die someday, aren't we?

When I think of death, so many thoughts race through my mind —

What'll happen to me when I die?

Will I even know that I died? Or will it be like the scientists say, I simply cease to exist?

Or perhaps I'll become a ghost that haunts the world, caught in-between the spirit world and the physical world, by virtue of some unfulfilled desire.

I guess I'll never know till I get there.

The Dream

The dream was disturbing...

I know I was dying — I think I know how a dying person feels and senses the world around him.

I was talking to my mother; all of a sudden, I developed a piercing pain in the chest (left side). I kept trying to control the pain and managed to keep talking with her. Suddenly I couldn’t take it anymore; I fell to the floor.

Next thing I know is that my mother's trying to massage my chest (trying out a cardiac massage) and I sense this darkness engulfing me, slowly... very slowly. My senses are active but I cannot act. I can see hectic activity all around me, but I am unable to even speak a word. Suddenly it all stops and there's a pleasant silence, a familiar darkness that is so comfortable.

I wake up the next morning with a pain in my chest, and mother asks me to go to the doctor for a medical checkup. I go to the doctor and he is annoying busy with other patients.

I wait at the clinic and the pain starts again.

An old lady runs out